Authorization explained: How it works and where it fits into the security system

What is accreditation?

Whitelisting is a cybersecurity strategy where only pre-approved or trusted users, entities, or actions are allowed to operate on a system or network. Instead of trying to stay one step ahead of cyber attackers to identify and block malicious code, through authentication, IT security teams instead identify trusted agents, applications, and sources that are pre-approved to access a particular system. With authorization, trusted entities – such as software programs, e-mail addresses, or IP addresses – are granted special access and rights to other entities are automatically denied.

Benefits of accreditation

Because whitelisting is an automatic security denial method, if used correctly, it can keep many Internet security problems at bay. By preventing unauthorized access, whitelisting can significantly reduce the risk of malware infection and intrusion, giving IT security teams tighter control over what can run or access programs within the enterprise.

Whitelisting can also be set up to give security administrators fine-grained control over access, and this approach simplifies security by enabling security administrators to focus only on monitoring authorized entities, while reducing the number of false positives that can arise from traditional blacklisting methods.